Cocaine markets in Colonial India: Industry, commerce and consumption, 1885 to 1911.

Description

A persistent question in the field of the history of pharmaceuticals is what drives markets for them? Is it supply or demand? This paper shows that it was supply, as a leading company in the German pharmaceutical industry deployed a range of methods to sell cocaine to South Asia. But this is only one of the core conclusions from the ‘Asian Cocaine Crisis’ project and the last seven years of research. Much of the evidence points to the agency of consumers. In this period Indians did not snort or inject cocaine. They ate it, using a delivery system known as the paan, a confection of betel-nut leaf, betel nut and a host of other ingredients that was long-established as an everyday feature of South Asian life. Moreover they did so for complex reasons, sometimes for the thrill of it, but also to deal with pain, in the hope of it tackling quasi-medical conditions such as impotence, or because of peer-pressure or a determination to defy parents and elders. What drove the cocaine market in India in the first decade of the twentieth-century?

Period	23 Aug 2022
Held at	ETH Zurich (ETH), Switzerland
Degree of Recognition	International